Video cameras are becoming increasing popular for both home and office use. Video is commonly used to document family events such as vacations, weddings, and graduations. In the office, video cameras are used to record presentations and user studies, and are often taken on business trips to record people, places, and meetings. Further, the use of Digital Video (DV), a digital camcorder format, is burgeoning due to the combination of high-quality digital video, inexpensive video capture cards and hard disk drives, and public interest in creating video content for the World Wide Web.
However, the problem is that it is difficult to make use of this video after it has been recorded. While people may view the video they recorded once or twice, it is typically left xe2x80x9cin the bag,xe2x80x9d since interesting portions are often intermixed with longer, less interesting portions. The video is often of poor quality stemming from, for example, abrupt camera movements or video segments that are too long to hold the viewer""s interest. Further, interesting portions may be difficult to find using only fast forward and rewind, particularly when the desired portion is short relative to the rest of the video or when different portions of the video are of interest to different peoples
While video editing tools exist (e.g., Adobe Premier or In-Sync""s Speed Razor) these tools are quite difficult for an amateur to use. Simpler video editing tools, such as Apple""s iMovie, Ulead Systems"" VideoStudio, or JavuNetwork, make it easy to select video takes and arrange them in a storyboard. However, none of these systems perform video analysis in order to provide intelligent editing assistance. In particular, most of these systems provide no assistance for selecting the in and out points necessary to trim the takes and, thus, a user must manually examine the video on a frame-by-frame basis and manually trim undesirable material from the takes. This task is difficult even with the simpler editing tools.
Accordingly, there is a need for an interactive video creation system and method for analyzing and composing video that does not require manual selection of the start and end points for each video clip. There is a further need for a simple, intuitive user interface for adjusting the total length of the edited video and for modifying the length of individual video clips by the application of a set of heuristic editing rules that emphasizes high quality video clips over low quality video clips.
The present invention, roughly described, provides a system and method for editing recorded video to produce a final output video that automatically determines the video in and out points required for cutting while automatically lengthening or shortening the lengths of individual clips in response to user-specified changes to the final length of the final output video in such a way that high quality video clips having low unsuitability scores are emphasized over low quality video clips having high unsuitability scores.
The method for editing recorded video that automatically determines the video in and out points required for cutting while automatically lengthening or shortening the lengths of individual clips in response to user-specified changes to the final length of the final output video comprises the steps of (1) computing an unsuitability score for time intervals of the recorded video; (2) segmenting the recorded video into video clips having in out clip boundaries based on the suitability score; and (3) trimming the clips, wherein respective clips are associated with a metaphorical spring having a spring strength.
The heuristically derived unsuitability score is computed and used as an input for metaphorical springs in which each selected video clip of the recorded video is associated with a metaphorical spring that maintains the selected clip at an optimal length while being responsive to a global system spring whose spring strength determines the final length of the final output video.
These and other objects and advantages of the invention will appear more clearly from the following detailed description in which the preferred embodiment of the invention has been set forth in conjunction with the drawings.